Negotiating with Jewish Feminist Theology and its Communities in the Writing of Amy Levy

This book completely redefines our understanding of fin de siècle Anglo-Jewish author Amy Levy and her writing. Demonstrating that Levy’s writing is less anti-Judaic and more profoundly influenced by the religious concerns of classical German Reformism, Luke Devine's innovative approach reveals that Levy's writing constitutes a genre whose female subjectivity evinces a concern for justice and authority that prefigures numerous aspects of Second-Wave Jewish feminist theory and its spiritual and theological underpinnings.

From Anglo-First-Wave towards American Second-Wave Jewish Feminism: Negotiating with Jewish Feminist Theology and its Communities in the Writing of Amy Levy is essential reading for scholars and students alike; particularly those of Victorian women’s writing, Anglo-Jewish literary criticism, Jewish feminism, Jewish feminist theology, Victorian studies, First, Second, and Third-Wave feminism, Anglo-Jewish religious, cultural, and social history, anti-Semitism, Reform Judaism (in Germany as well as England), Orthodox / rabbinic Judaism, first-century Palestinian Judaism, modern Jewish identity, the early-Church, and the Jesus movement. The book will also be of interest to readers and students of Victorian literature, minority literature, lesbian or Sapphic poetics, Midrash, Christian Evangelicalism, the fragmentation of the Anglo-Jewish community, and nineteenth-century secularization. The book's highly original perspective elucidates the relationship between the fin de siècle Anglo-Jewish writing of Amy Levy and Second-Wave Jewish feminist theology and activism. Indeed, in direct opposition to much of the extant historiography, the book demonstrates that Levy’s writing is less anti-Judaic and more profoundly inflected by the religious concerns of German Reform Judaism than has previously been supposed. In fact, her writing constitutes a genre whose female subjectivity evidences a concern for justice and authority that prefigures numerous aspects of Second-Wave Jewish feminist theory and its spiritual, theological, and theoretical underpinnings.

From Anglo-First-Wave towards American Second-Wave Jewish Feminism: Negotiating with Jewish Feminist Theology and its Communities in the Writing of Amy Levy is essential reading for scholars and students alike; particularly those of Victorian women’s writing, Anglo-Jewish literary criticism, Jewish feminism, Jewish feminist theology, Victorian studies, First, Second, and Third-Wave feminism, Anglo-Jewish religious, cultural, and social history, anti-Semitism, Reform Judaism (in Germany as well as England), Orthodox / rabbinic Judaism, first-century Palestinian Judaism, modern Jewish identity, the early-Church, and the Jesus movement. The book will also be of interest to readers and students of Victorian literature, minority literature, lesbian or Sapphic poetics, Midrash, Christian Evangelicalism, the fragmentation of the Anglo-Jewish community, and nineteenth-century secularization. The book's highly original perspective elucidates the relationship between the fin de siècle Anglo-Jewish writing of Amy Levy and Second-Wave Jewish feminist theology and activism. Indeed, in direct opposition to much of the extant historiography, the book demonstrates that Levy’s writing is less anti-Judaic and more profoundly inflected by the religious concerns of German Reform Judaism than has previously been supposed. In fact, her writing constitutes a genre whose female subjectivity evidences a concern for justice and authority that prefigures numerous aspects of Second-Wave Jewish feminist theory and its spiritual, theological, and theoretical underpinnings.

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Biography

Luke Devine

Luke Devine holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Feminist Theology from the University of Gloucestershire in England. He also possesses an MRes degree in Jewish History and Culture from the University of Southampton, alongside a First-Class BA Honours History degree. He has written extensively on Jewish feminist theology.

Table of Contents (page 5)

Preface (page 7)

Acknowledgments (page 9)

From Anglo-First-Wave to American Second-Wave Jewish Feminism: Introduction (page 11)

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